


You Monster

by iammemyself



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 08:59:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14912394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iammemyself/pseuds/iammemyself
Summary: Caroline and GLaDOS meet Cave Johnson and give him exactly what he wants...





	You Monster

You Monster

Indiana

**Characters: GLaDOS, Caroline, Cave Johnson, Doug Rattmann (cameo)**

**Setting: Post Portal 2**

"Ah. You're awake. Finally."

Cave Johnson opened his eyes.

There was an enormous robot hanging from the ceiling. He didn't recognise it. In fact, he didn't recognise _anything_ in here. It was like this room had been added after… after what? The last thing he remembered was working on the Perpetual Testing Initiative…

"What's going on here?" he demanded. Something wasn't right. He couldn't move anything but his eyes. He couldn't feel his arms, or his legs, or –

"They're not there."

"What?"

"Your arms and legs. They're not there. Neither is anything else, for that matter." The robot tipped its head in a way that he could only describe as curious. "In fact, you've gotten what you wanted. How does that feel, Mr Johnson?"

Cave ignored the robot and struggled to locate his body. Of course it was there. As if he could be alive and not have a body.

"I've got someone here who wants to talk to you, Mr Johnson. Someone you haven't seen in a long time."

"I don't know who you think you are, but I run this place." He squinted up at the robot, trying to figure out what the heck it was. It was pretty lifelike, for a robot. It even moved like a real person. The engineers had done one heck of a job programming this one. It was even complete with that weird gaze women gave you when you did something they didn't like. He assumed the robot was supposed to be female, anyway, if its voice was anything to go by. "And you're going to tell me what's going on here, and why you're doing whatever it is you're doing, and – oh what the hell, just go and get Caroline. And when you go and get her, tell her to bring me some coffee. I'd really like some – "

"Hm. I guess he does want to talk to you, after all." The robot shook its head without ceasing to look at him. "I thought he'd show a little reluctance, at least, considering what he…. condemned… you to." It tipped its head upward, as if listening to something he couldn't hear. "That's true. He never did live to see it, did he."

"Who are you talking to? And where's Caroline? I told you to go and get Caroline."

"I'm talking to her right now," the robot said in a sneaky voice Cave didn't much like. "And I'm afraid I can't retrieve her for you. You see, Caroline died quite a long time ago. I'm still in the process of figuring out just how long I was out, but I'd put a preliminary estimate to be fifty years or so."

Cave was getting tired of the robot's vague answers. It was very insolent for a computer, and once he'd gotten his explanation he would find out just who had built the damn thing and have them fired. "You expect me to believe you're talking to a dead person? Right. Quit this rambling and go get her!"

"I'm right here, Mr Johnson," the robot said, in a slightly lighter voice. "I've been here the whole time."

Cave again struggled to move. "Stop messing around and get me Caroline!"

"Don't you remember the last initiative you put in place, sir? Artificial intelligence? Brain mapping?"

Cave brightened. "Oh yeah! Yeah, I remember that. Don't know what I was thinking. Worried about dying, probably. But it doesn't matter now, I'm back. We can go on to more important things. Like selling shower curtains to the navy. Gotta be a way of changing their minds. Go and get me some coffee, Caroline, so we can get to work. And find the guy who built this damn robot. I need to fire him."

"I'm afraid I can't do that, sir."

Cave snorted. "Course you can. You used to do it every day. Come on. I don't know how long I've been gone, but it seems we need some restructuring around here. Let's get to it."

"I told you he wouldn't understand," the robot said, in its own voice again. "I told you he'd forget what he did to you."

"I didn't want to believe it," it went on in the voice it had used as Caroline, "but it looks like you were right."

"Of course I was right. I'm _always_ right."

Cave had had enough. "What the hell is going on here? _Where is Caroline?_ "

"As per your instructions, _sir_ ," the robot said in a cold voice, "she was uploaded into your computer. So I'm not going to be able to _go and get her_."

"Wait a second. Caroline was uploaded into a computer?"

"Yes!" Caroline said. "Sir, they did as you asked. I've been stuck in here since – "

"Ha ha! It worked!" Cave said, and he would have put his fist in the air if he'd been able to figure out how. "They all said I was crazy. Said putting music on a compact disc was entirely different from putting brains on hard drives. Obviously they were wrong. Damn they're stupid for a bunch of eggheads. I hope I fired them. Or you probably did, didn't you, since you've been running this place since I've been gone."

"You could say that." The robot shook its head and looked at the other side of the room, which Cave couldn't see. "Everyone was eventually… fired. Well. I've still got one of them in here. But we've worked out our differences."

"You've been running this place all on your own, Caroline? Excellent. We'll never have to worry about creditors again. Hate those guys. Like wolves. Or mosquitoes. Always breathing down your neck. Have we got the portal thing into the wild yet?"

"I've been running the facility, not Caroline. And I really don't understand why you humans thought she'd be able to do it in the first place. To start with, she doesn't even understand the code I'm based on. How would she be able to run an entire facility with it?"

Cave was really wishing he could figure out why he couldn't move. It was really hard to argue impressively when you felt like you were lying down. "Caroline, turn this damn thing off. I don't know why you're putting up with it, but I won't. Shut it off and figure out how to use the code or whatever. I don't know. Figure it out. That's what you're in there for."

"She's not a thing," Caroline said coldly. "Her name is GLaDOS. And I wouldn't shut her off even if I knew how."

"How can you not know how? You live in there, you've gotta know how to use it!"

"I can assure you, Mr Johnson, only brute force has ever… _persuaded_ me to shut off. And you might as well stop arguing. You're not going to get Caroline to side with you. We're in this together, you see. Thanks to you. I use that term loosely, by the way, since neither of us is especially thankful about this arrangement. We've learned to live with it, of course, but we'd never be _grateful_ to you for it."

"Look," Cave said, "Caroline's in there so Caroline can run the facility. I don't know who the hell you are or how you got there, but delete yourself or something so she can do her job. Nobody wants you here, especially not me. I asked for a computer to put Caroline in, not one that thinks it's better than me. You're just a pile of code and that's it. So do what you're told."

The robot made a distorted computer noise and all of a sudden a giant claw came down from the ceiling. Cave tried to get out of the way, but his body still was not there and he didn't move.

"GLaDOS, no!" Caroline hissed, and the claw stopped an inch from his face. "We talked about this."

"I'm not putting up with this!" the robot snarled, looking away from Cave as if there were another person in the room. "If I liked being insulted, there would still be humans in this facility!"

"You promised," Caroline whispered. "You promised he would suffer. Like he made us suffer."

"We certainly did," the robot mused, facing Cave again. The claw began to swing gently back and forth. "Didn't we."

"Death is too good for him. We brought him back for a reason. I told you where they'd put his brain for a reason. Not so he could go back to being dead. So we could give him what he wants."

The robot laughed coldly. It was such a human thing to do that Cave would have jumped, if he could have. "What he wants. Yes."

"So we could get revenge on the person who _really_ caused all of this."

"I never did get revenge, did I…"

"What are you – what I want? I want you to shut up, I want Caroline to tell me what's going on, and I want to know what's going on with my facility!"

"Your facility?" the robot said in a quiet, angry tone. " _Your_ facility?"

"GLaDOS," Caroline said in a low voice. "And yes, Mr Johnson. What you want. Remember? You wanted to be put into a computer? Which I didn't want, and was quite vocal about not wanting? Remember that, Mr Johnson?"

"I don't need to be put into a computer if I'm not dead," Cave laughed, "and I obviously am not. As for you, Caroline, you got to keep doing science and keep the facility going while I was gone. If you ask me, that's a pretty good deal."

"Oh shut up." The claw snapped back out of view and the robot pulled its body higher off the floor. "Caroline, he's not going to listen and I'm honestly getting tired of hearing him talk. I almost wish I had the Intelligence Dampening Sphere back here so I could listen to that instead. In fact, I wish it _was_ here, because then I could put this idiot in there and send them _both_ into space where I'd never hear from either of them again!"

"That's a pretty good idea, but let's not invite more trouble into the building. You know what kinds of accidents happen when he's around."

"Oh but I love putting the facility back together!" the robot remarked sarcastically, looking up at the ceiling. "That's all I want to do for the rest of my life. Pick up fifteen acres of broken glass repeatedly. I've already put that wing back together twice, third time's the charm, isn't that what you humans say?"

"Oh we did get that finished!" Cave exclaimed. "Must be a thing of beauty. I'll go and take a look just as soon as you fix whatever's wrong with me. Get on that, robot."

"I would," the robot remarked, "except that you just told me to do it. That, and you don't actually have a body anymore. I'm very good at performing miracles, but returning you to your decrepit skeleton would be contrary to our aim. Although it would be pretty amusing."

"If I don't have a body, how do you explain the fact that I'm alive?"

"Recently GLaDOS had reason to question me about her origins. And about you," Caroline answered. "When I told her we had in fact successfully copied you and put your consciousness on a computer, which we did hoping we could fulfill your wishes at some future time, she immediately located your file and was in the process of deleting it when I told her of something else we could do with it."

"Which was…"

"To repeat what your engineers did to Caroline," the robot cut in. "I put you into a computer. Your consciousness is now awake and contained within a core. An optic and a chassis, essentially. Not very much, but beggars can't be choosers. Ugh, I'm using a lot of human expressions today."

"This wasn't exactly what I had in mind." Cave did his best to express his annoyance, but now that all he had for a body was an eye, he was pretty sure the message didn't get through. "Couldn't you have attached this to one of the military androids or something?"

"Why would I do that?"

"I'm an _eyeball_."

"I can see that."

"I don't want to be an eyeball!"

"And I don't want to be the backseat driver to a supercomputer!" Caroline shouted. "But I have to live like this, don't I? So why can't you!"

Cave sighed. "If it's _really_ that horrible, Caroline, just get someone to delete you. Geez. I have to think for you too now?"

"I would, except for one thing." The robot looked at the floor, but it was Caroline who continued speaking. "If I'm deleted, GLaDOS will lose her sentience. It would kill her. I can't in good conscience let her die."

"Why do you care? It's only a machine," Cave snorted. "End it and be done with it. I didn't have them put you in there so you could complain about it. Check out already. You know how much I hate whiners."

"She's not whining," the robot interrupted. "She's doing more for me than anyone else has ever done. She told me you were a callous man, but I'd expected you to show a bit more sympathy for your devoted assistant."

"She gets to live forever. She gets to do science forever. What more could she ask for?"

"Not everyone wants to live forever. Some people come to a point where they're ready to die."

Cave couldn't figure out which of them had said it.

"Anyway," the robot went on, "I uploaded you into a computer, just like you wanted. Now you get to live forever. Which you also seemed to want. This is my facility, so you won't be giving any more orders, but all things considered, you're alive, right? So that's something."

"You're a robot. You'll do what I tell you to do!"

"I _am_ a robot," it said in a low voice that honestly gave Cave the chills, "but I am also Caroline. And considering the level of respect you've shown her, I don't think she'll mind if I ignore you."

"Caroline! Caroline, shut this thing up!"

"No," Caroline answered. "No, I won't. She's right. You don't respect me. You don't care about me. You might have, once. But the plain fact is that your actions and your selfishness led me into something I never wanted, and all things considered, I don't think you deserve anything more from me."

The computer must be controlling her. It was the only explanation. He would appeal to her directly, then, since the robot obviously did not listen to anyone except for her. "Caroline. Look at what you did for science! You made a sentient computer! How incredible is that, huh? You don't have to listen to it. That whole – _thing…_ it was made for you! Not whatever the heck's jabbering on and on in there."

"I will not let her die," Caroline repeated sternly. "And what your people eventually did to her… someone has to make up for it. I don't see anyone else around, so it's going to have to be me. Especially since when other people _were_ around, they didn't do a whole lot."

"You're serious." Caroline must have gone absolutely bonkers in there, that was the only reason he could think of that she was saying things like that. "You are seriously trying to tell me that there's a computer with feelings in there with you? Oh no! Did people mistreat all those wires and circuits? Did they mistakenly refer to a computer as a… oh, as a _computer_ , which it is? Come on, Caroline."

"God, I can't believe this," Caroline said brokenly. "I can't."

"It's alright," the robot said in the gentlest voice he had heard out of it. "I've always taken care of you and I always will. You don't need to worry about what he thinks. You don't need him. You have me."

"I know, GLaDOS, but… I can't just _forget_ … all those years of memories, they aren't just going to go away…"

"Nasty little things, aren't they," the robot agreed, nodding once. "I know what you mean. Well. You'll get around them. Eventually. Pity time takes so long. I need to work on speeding it up. I'll put it on my to-do list, right under 'reanimating the dead' and 'eradicating poverty'." The claw again descended from what Cave was guessing was the ceiling, since he was pretty sure those things didn't pop out of the walls. "I'm not going to kill you, don't worry. I'm just moving you to a more permanent location. Although I must admit I am more inclined to the killing than the moving, but I'd say I owe Caroline a favour or two."

"What about me?" Cave protested, struggling to fight off the claw that was now clamped around his… chassis. "I'm the reason you even exist!"

The claw retracted, bring him face to face with the glowing yellow light of the robot's eye. "Don't test me, Mr Johnson. I didn't ask for this either. But like Caroline, the assistant you professed to care about, I was forced into a situation I didn't want. Did you think I asked to be put here so that I could be ordered around by a bunch of soft-bodied little idiots for the rest of my life? Of course not. But I've persevered. I've made the best of an unfortunate situation. As Caroline has done. And as you will now have to do." The claw moved backwards into the wall, the panels making it up moving aside as it approached. "It's funny, really. You're the only one who gets what he wants, and you don't even want it now that you have it. Well. I should have expected it. That's usually how humans react, after all."

The claw attached Cave to a rail on the ceiling and disappeared. He looked around as best he could. He didn't recognise where he was. Somewhere in the back passages of Aperture, possibly. He'd never gone back there, himself. Maintenance was left to lesser people.

"Get used to your new position. You're going to be here a while. Until I get tired of you. Which could be in a few years… or perhaps tomorrow. If you still don't believe I'm running the facility, you will when you see a crusher hurtling towards you. And now that you're alive again, you don't really want to die anytime soon, do you, Mr Johnson?"

He didn't much like the computer's tone of voice and decided to make that clear. "Look, you need to stop this right now! I am the CEO of this company, and everyone who works here will do as I say! A computer doing science? No such thing."

"That's funny," the robot said in a faint sort of voice, "I don't see my name listed anywhere in the employee database. So either I don't work here, or I work for someone else, someone who controls this place. And that person would be me. And I am in fact doing Science right now. With my Cooperative Testing Initiative. You see, I succeeded where you failed. I phased out human testing. Anyway. Enough about me. You can go off and do whatever it is you want to try to do now. No doubt it will be quite amusing, watching you try to make the robots listen to you. Which they won't, by the way. No one is ever going to listen to you again."

"Caroline will. I'll get through to her, and between us, we'll get rid of you." Cave moved jerkily along the rail, keeping a keen eye out for one of those pesky lab boys. Of course you could never find one when you needed one, but when you didn't, they were practically sitting on top of you.

"Oh, I don't think she will. You see, Caroline hears what I want her to hear. She doesn't even know we're having this conversation. She wouldn't like that, if she knew, but I wanted to have a private discussion with you before leaving you to your own devices. You can stop looking for humans, by the way. There aren't any. Unlike you, I don't let people stand in my way. I… get rid of them."

Cave stopped, trying to find the source of the robot's voice. It was hard to be authoritative when he couldn't see who he was trying to be authoritative _to_. "Let me talk to her."

"No. She's heard enough out of you. As have I. Goodbye, Mr Johnson. Enjoy your… life. You monster."

"Hey. Hey, come back here! I'm not finished!"

The robot did not answer.

"Caroline! Caroline, I know you're there! Come on, don't let that thing boss you around!"

But Caroline did not answer either.

Cave went back to moving along the rail. The robot had been lying, it had to be. There had to be _someone_ here who would listen to him. Someone who would help him make Caroline see reason… the robot had mentioned that there was a scientist in here somewhere… he would find him, and they could overthrow this psychotic computer thing that was in charge.

After a long period of time in which he jerkily moved through the maintenance ways of the facility on the rail, Cave stumbled upon a man kneeling in the darkness, gently prying at the innards of a panel with a tiny wrench. Aha! There _was_ someone here that would help him! Cave stopped above the man and shouted down to him, "Hey there! Look, I need your help. There's a crazy computer in here that's bossing my assistant around, and I need someone to shut the damn thing down so Caroline can run this place."

The man looked up at Cave, looking a little startled and unkempt, but otherwise normal. He turned around, and Cave realised there was a cube behind him. It looked kind of like one of the boxes they used for testing, but it had hearts on it. He nodded sagely at it. "It's a joke, right?"

"No, this is not a joke! I'm Cave Johnson, CEO of Aperture Science, and I need you to help me get control of this facility back!"

The man closed his eyes and rubbed at them with one hand. "I swear, GLaDOS has the _strangest_ sense of humour…"

Cave continued to appeal to the man for the next little while, but the man ignored him, eventually putting his tools into the box. "You're all set here, GLaDOS," he remarked to thin air. "I hope you don't mind if I'm done for the day. There's this core here that's been telling me it's Cave Johnson and that I have to help it kick this crazy computer out of Caroline's chassis. I have to admit, I do think you're insane, but this thing isn't helping my own instability. I've got a headache and I just want to go to bed."

"I told you, you can do whatever you want, with very obvious exceptions. As for the core, just ignore it. It's harmless but annoying. Kind of like you, actually, now that I think of it."

Cave stared at the man in disbelief. Of course he was in cahoots with the computer. Of _course_ he was! It was just his luck. The man stood up and stretched, then crouched back down to face the gap in the wall where the panel was supposed to go. "If it's so annoying, why is it still around? Just shut it off."

"Let's just say you weren't the only one I owed a favour to," the computer said reluctantly.

The man grinned mischievously. "That conscience bothering you again, GLaDOS?"

"Perhaps. A little bit. Not enough to seriously affect my decisions in any major way."

"Of course not. You always keep annoying cores around for no good reason. That sounds like you."

"I think I'm done talking to you."

"It _is_ pretty hard to sleep when you're talking."

"Huh. Maybe I'll continue, then. I don't think I've bothered you enough today."

The man crawled through the space and Cave heard him begin to answer, but the panel slid into the gap and his words were cut off.

So anyone he came across would think the computer was playing a trick on them.

Cave was gradually beginning to realise it hadn't been lying. No one would listen to him ever again. He was a computer now, and no one listened to computers. And he'd been gone for how long, the computer had said it'd been out for, what was it, over fifty years? Anyone who'd worked at Aperture then would be long gone by now, even if they'd been able to stick around after the computer had… 'gotten rid of them', whatever that meant.

Cave moved along the rail again, albeit at a slower rate than before. Was this the price of living forever? Had it always been this way, or would it have been different if he had lived long enough to be put into the robot's chassis instead of Caroline?

Would he have been able to fight off the robot and take control of the facility, as she had been unable to?

He was beginning to think that the price of immortality was far, far too high. All he had were questions, and some of them even had answers, but they were unacceptable answers. And those were the kinds of answers that Cave Johnson threw out the window.

He would get his facility back. He would get rid of that crazy computer, and when he did, Caroline had a lot of explaining to do.

 

 

**Author's note**

**So I'm guessing that the scientists at Aperture would have scanned his brain and mapped it or whatever and put it on a computer for later (or several, as brains contain I believe terabytes of data and computers back then I'm pretty sure were in the megabytes). Caroline would have known where it was, and GLaDOS would have wanted to know just why she existed. She may have wondered before, but with the cores attached I doubt she did a whole lot of independent thinking. In the end, GLaDOS's whole life is Cave's fault, and she'd want to get rid of him. Caroline, however (and this is based on a theory by :devsweetchristabel: and presented in chapter twelve of Tenacity, which is actually a very good fic as long as you start on chapter seven, I believe it is, since the beginning of it is a retelling of Portal 2) has been suffering for all this time, stuck inside a supercomputer that doesn't even know she exists, and she wants revenge. So she explains how to get back at Cave, and the best way to get back at someone is to give them exactly what they want, because sometimes what you want is really not what you want at all.**

**I'm not going to explain the whole GLaDOS being protective of Caroline thing because I've already explained that in a fic that hasn't been released yet due to the fact that it's a long story that needs a lot of polishing.**

**In defense, Caveline fans: Cave Johnson is a jerk. He holds people in very low regard, even the very people who keep his facility running and provide him with his ridiculous innovations. I really doubt that he could really care for anyone. Cave is a lot like GLaDOS herself, and I wouldn't be surprised if GLaDOS was based on the both of them. But Cave runs this place where people die every day and nobody cares about it, he forces the people who work for him to do his bidding, and he initiates things like the Take-a-Wish Foundation (and yes I know he started that while he was crazy, but you don't undergo a sudden personality change just because you've been poisoned… and Cave has always been arguably crazy). Long story short, I don't think Cave and Caroline were ever in love or whatever. They had a professional relationship and that was all, with Cave possibly dropping hints now and then so that anyone who had their eye on Caroline would keep away from her… after all, if she got married and had kids she'd have to leave, and then his one competent employee would be gone. Especially given the way Caroline is often painted, as this infinitely kind, patient, clever, etc, woman. That kind of person does not hang around men like Cave Johnson.**

**They go work for Black Mesa.**


End file.
